Observations of the Fox

   

The core concept of Walkabout is "Mad Max meets Tank Girl, via the Aboriginal Dreaming". However different people will be getting different ideas from the notions of "Mad Max", "Tank Girl" and "Aboriginal Dreaming". The three concepts get us into a ball park, and the general ball park is where any of the two circles overlap, while the specifics is where all three overlap... Mad Max + Tank Girl A world where the technology of the past is decaying but still dangerous in the right hands. A world where a few people still hold most of the power by using a combination of charisma, fear-mongering, and lackeys who don't know better. Vast deserts, ecological disaster. Vehicles play an important and defining role in characters lives.  Tank Girl + Aboriginal Dreaming Talking animals (although in Tank Girl it's mostly the rippers). Things are rarely what they seem at the surface at first glance. There's a funny side to the events, and it's of...

For those who are new to this project, some food for thought... this was intended to be a part of the prelude to the game.   Statement The Walkabout project was started on Tharawal Country, roughly 25 kilometres southwest of the site of the Appin Massacre of 1816, the first recorded instance of government ordered “removal” of Indigenous inhabitants from their homes. Colonial soldiers drove men, women, and children to their deaths; whether shot, plunging over cliffs, or driven from their land not to be seen again. The area was considered prime agricultural land for the colony. 10 kilometres further west of this project’s origin, lies the Warragamba catchment area, where the Gundungurra people were removed from their Country to dam a vast valley as a water catchment for the city of Sydney. They were forbidden from returning, and no regard was given for their ancestral sacred sites which were flooded. In the years since the Walkabout project started, work continued in the lands of t...

Let's say I have a plan for a story over a couple of sessions. Think of this like a story arc that goes over a couple of episodes in a TV series. Each session has a "context" act to establish it's events, a "complication" act to build up its tension, a "climax" act to face the issues at hand, and finally a "conclusion" act to resolve the story and pull things back into line. Four vignettes scattered across the episodes can help tie sessions that otherwise seem disconnected into a coherent whole. If we're going with the four act story structure, there are a few ways we can build a long form narrative while allowing a generally freeform approach to the choices made by characters.    Story Act Episode Event Notes E01 Act 1 Context: Let the players explore No predefined vignette E01 Act 2 Complication: Introduce the immediate story Optional Acceleration vignette to prompt na...

  If you've been a reader of this blog in the past, you'll be aware that I've regularly got a few backburner projects. Over the years, these projects have included cartography, mutiple games, illustration series, physically creative endeavours.  In the time since I started this blog, I've moved house several times... Riverwood (Start of blog ➡ October 2010) Buxton  (October 2010 ➡ January 2019) Barham  (January 2019 ➡ April 2019) Barham  (April 2019 ➡ January 2019) Coleambally  (January 2020 ➡ December 2020) Oxley Vale  (December 2020 ➡ May 2021) West Tamworth  (May 2021 ➡ July 2022) East Tamworth  (July 2022 ➡ August 2023) South Tamworth  (August 2023 ➡ Current) The last move should the be last one for a while, if not the last one altogether, since my wife and I have bought the house we've moved into. During this time I've worked a number of jobs and studied at various levels... Padstow TAFE College [Certificate 4 in Web Design]  (...

 It's been a while since I've posted. I was going to let the blog slide into oblivion, but over the time that it's been active (even with a few years where postig has been non existent) there have been over 1.25 million views of the site. That's probably a bit too much to just waste.  It's been a busy few years lately, with game design taking a back seat while I've focused on becoming a teacher. There are some stories to tell in that regard, and they might get revealed eventually, but I can't do so at the moment. Anyway, here's to new weeky blog posts in 2024. Some of them will focus on th game ideas that I've been having, some will focus on the lessons learned running a high school gaming club, and some will be the usual random thoughts I've had over the years. Let's see how things go.

Magic manifests in many ways. Not always in spectacular or obviously unnatural. Sometimes the most effective magic is subtle, such as an athletic edge, an ability to see things invisible to the rest of the world, or a gut feeling. For those who dabble in magic, life can be strange. Even if they avoid seeking out the more blatant elements of the supernatural, sometimes the blatant elements of the supernatural seek them out.

Looks like the idea of a Code of Ethics has some traction. Here is a sample of where it seems to be heading . At the moment, a Code of Ethics on its own is a vague an nebulous thing. It doesn't need a regulatory body if everyone agrees to it, but the reason something like this tends to be put in place is because people aren't acting ethically and a community benchmark needs to be set. The closest analogue I can see here is the founding of the Comics Code Authority in the US, back in the 60s. The way I understand it, it wasn't really a watchdog, but more a show of solidarity and wholesomeness in the face of groups who wanted to shut them down. Arguably, something like this might have been useful in the moral panic of "D&D = satanism" back in the 80s. Maybe it will be useful if that sort of thing raises it's head further in the new right wing conservative political climate. Maybe. The catch I see is that the whole thing needs a critical mass of people ...

I was going to get started on my next batch of 7 RPGaDay posts, but something more interesting came across my radar a few hours ago. I've written a few times abut the way Australian game designers have innovated and generally been ignored, with lots of people saying that maybe Australian's should have publicised their innovation better... Or simply made it known that they were doing things. I guess this is one of those times when innovation is happening, and when everywhere else in the world will generally ignore us until someone in the UK or the US does exactly the same thing then gets praised for their wondrous idea. The innovation is the idea of a game designers Code of Ethics, linked to a professional association of game design. For roleplaying games, this might be a companion association to a professional association of computer game designers, the "industry" probably isn't big enough to necessitate it's own association. Here's some of the discu...

In my new school, I've finally discovered the small community of roleplayers... ...and it basically consists of half of the year 11 students, who play twice a week. Now I just need to expand their horizons beyond D&D.

When you start playing a game that uses a point buy system, it's a bit like playing with a pile of Lego. There are numerous ways to put things together, and you can probably make a wide variety of things that work with the constructions of the GM or the other players, but there is far more opportunity to make something that just doesn't make sense in the GMs intended story, or just doesn't work with the constructions devised by the other players. That's where the " session zero " comes in. Everyone gets on the same page, characters are developed from a mutually understood set of ground rules. A part of the session zero is the choice of game being played, so this post is assuming that choice has been made and all the players are on board. But more of what I'm thinking about at the moment is the development of a series of template fragments that might be linked to a specific story concept. To follow the Lego analogy that started the post, it's equivale...

Wow, time flies. I used to update this blog at least twice a week. There were even periods when I'd update it daily. But now I look at it, and it's almost been a month since my last post. At this stage I'm still acclimating to a new world. This is a place that exists far from any city, it almost feels like the apocalypse would come in the cities while the regional centres would feel a slight blip on their radars, and the country towns like my new home would just go on existing... ...I'm meeting old farmers who exist like immortals who have lingered too long in the world, overseeing their family dynasties, remembering the passing of ages... I'm meeting those who've lived their whole lives here, whether townies or farmers, not knowing the ways of the city at all... then there are those like me who've fled the cities to make a new life. My plans for Walkabout don't seem too far off the reality that I'm seeing here. I've started retyping t...

There are always ideas going through my mind where I combine the concepts that have been produced by other people, into something new, or maybe just a new interpretation of something that that I think wasn't necessarily executed as well as it could have been. I guess that's just the curse of being a game designer. I'm currently working on the equipment book for The Law, but another nagging side project has begged to be written during the course of NaGaDeMon. I don't know if I've mentioned this side project before, but it's something that has been tinkered with for a few months now... it's working title is simply The Fen. The basic premise of The Fen is bayou rentpunk. A bunch of people struggling to survive, with little opportunitu to get ahead in the world, are simply trying to survive as they struggle from meal to meal, facing all sorts of environmental threats and hazards that constantly threaten to take them down. This isn't a game about her...

I deliberately hold back on something to make sure it's done right. I deliberately do extra research, years of extra research, by duscussing concepts with the communities related to the concept, modifying elements of the core, and playtesting iterations of the concept thoroughly. I continually post elements of my work to show that the whole thing is still in development... ...then other people come along and do something in a similar vein. Bastion An Afrocentric post-apocalyptic sword and sorcery rpg. I can't help but see parallels to my own long term project, Walkabout , which is an Australian-Aboriginal-centric post-apocalyptic rpg. Both draw on distinctly non-European roots, both are post-apocalyptic, both are about heroes pushing back a darkness that warps the world. Beyond those superficial similarities there are a lot of differences, as I would have hoped. I don't know how much acyual research that team has done regarding their setting, or whether they...

The term 'familiar' applies less to a type of spirit entity, and more to a function that certain spirits undertake. To be considered a familiar, a spirit needs the strength to manifest in the physical world, they also need to have mastered the knack of catalyzing the mystic potential in an awakened mortal. Familiars have a variety of forms when they manifest in the physical realm, but the most common are animals, "intelligent" weapons or amulets, or small humanoid homonculi. In the spirit world, the true form of a familiar is revealed. Such forms often reflect the physical form, but with some differences... animal spirits might combine traits of various beasts, swords may have wings, homonculi may be full human size. Arrogant mystics who don't regularly show appreciation or give gifts to their familiars sometimes find that their magical potential is weakened by a poor relationship. Those mystics who do cultivate a strong relationship with their familiar oft...

Chimera has been introduced earlier in this series, as have her dedicated followers from the Order of the White Lotus . As an avatar of dreams, Chimera has the ability to change her appearance in a limited way to blend into the dreamscapes and spirit realms she wanders through, but anyone capable of seeing the truth in dreams will always notice her dragonfly wings. Chimera has a second ability that has gained notoriety across the realms. This is a technique of ripping apart the fabric of time and space to create temporary wormhole portals. Depending on the elemental pressure or energy charge differentials, there is often a shockwave produced by these portals, sounding something like a thunderclap... the greater the distance or the differences between realms, the larger and louder the shockwave. Members of the Order of the White Lotus are said to know ritual markings that help to ground these wormholes. This allows Chimera and the most powerful generals of the Order to travel th...

In some parts of the spirit realms, belief is fragile and the bubbles of planar reality are at risk of being obliterated by the howling winds of oblivion . In other parts if the spirit realms, rigid tradition, faith and stagnant belief lick reality in a stranglehold. The hellish realms of the outer reaches feed on the beliefs people have in a tormented afterlife, their denizens and rulers bond themselves to these eternal beliefs, becoming virtual immortals as they do so. In these stagnant realms, darkness can fester, groweing like a fungus, sloiwly consuming the living, recycling it to give birth to new energy in time. There are forgotten parts of these realms, areas where the darkness grows over parts the people want hidden, but in those hidden places the dark truths lie concealed. Demons torture the souls of those who lived lives found wanting, and sometimes they themselves grow bored of the torture, leaving pitiful souls strapped to torture implements as the darkness slowly s...

Just as it is possible for a consciousness to transform the spirit world around them, those who are not careful find that the spirit world changes them. Those with a singular focus find themselves becoming corrupted by the energies associated with that goal... of course they themselves may believe that corruption comes from dilution of the regined energies of a singular focus, as such they see themselves purified of external taint. Those who linger too long may develop notoriety as a conceptual avatar, perhaps becoming synonymous with a concept like hate, torture, or fear. In this way the decadent noble houses of the outer reaches were born, and new upstart revolutionaries seek to overthrow them with their own twisted power.  Some call the pin-headed cenobyte the eldest advisor to the noble House of Pride, others claim he is a more recent denizen of the realms, twisting fate and reality with a mysterious cubic artefact dredged up by crustacean scavengers and traded for the s...

Dangerous things are always threatening to pour into reality from the primeval chaos that exists just beyond the relative stability of the spirit realms. Thankfully, there are various orders of peacekeepers, rangers and outlanders who are willing to get their hands dirty so that others can live without fear of the worst.  To say that they've seen some shit is an understatement. Among the more notable groups who patrol the dark places are the Order of the Tin Star. These lawbringers are constantly patrolling the darkness, looking for souls to rescue and wrongs to right. Along with their shining star medallions, the easiest way to identify a Tin Star ranger is the presence of their hounds. There will almost always be at least one hound, but often may be half a dozen or more; and they will range in size from chihuahuas and terriers through to saint bernards and Irish wolfhounds... some have even been known to stride the dangerous deep realms with wolves and hellhounds.  ...